Trump reportedly threatened to fire a top doctor at the CDC for sounding the alarm about coronavirus in February

• President Trump threatened to fire a top CDC official after her blunt warnings that COVID-19 would become a pandemic caused the stock market to plunge, the Wall Street Journal reported.
• Trump was on a state visit to India when Dr. Nancy Messonnier publicly sounded the alarm about the severity of the coronavirus outbreak during a February 26 press conference.
• The Journal reported that Trump then called Health & Human Services Sec. Alex Azar on his trip back and threatened to oust Dr. Messonnier from the CDC altogether.
• While Trump did not end up firing Dr. Messonnier, The New York Times reported that the entire episode effectively killed off any efforts to persuade Trump to take decisive action to mitigate the virus.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

President Donald Trump threatened to fire Dr. Nancy Messonnier, a top official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, after her blunt warnings about the severity of COVID-19 caused the stock market to plunge in February, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

Many of the details on the episode surrounding Dr. Messonnier were also reported in a lengthy New York Times investigation into all of the times Trump brushed aside warnings of the severity of the coronavirus crisis, failed to act, and was delayed by significant infighting and mixed messages from his aides at the White House.

The bulk of the Wall Street Journal's Wednesday report focused on the role of Secretary of Health & Human Services Alex Azar in directing, and then being pushed to the side of, the Trump administration's coronavirus response following a series of crucial missteps he made — in addition to his clashing with Trump.

Both the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times reported that the defining event that led to Azar's role being diminished was when a top CDC official broke from the administration's otherwise optimistic messaging on coronavirus.

In late February, Trump was on a state visit to India when Dr. Messonnier, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC, publicly sounded the alarm about the severity of the coronavirus outbreak in a February 26 press conference, warning that the outbreak would soon become a pandemic.

"It's not so much a question of if this will happen anymore but rather more a question of exactly when this will happen and how many people in this country will have severe illness," Messonnier said, clearly warning that community transmission of the virus would be inevitable.

The Times reported that Trump spent the plane ride stewing in anger both over Messonnier's comments and the resulting plummet of the stock market they caused, and called Azar "raging that Dr. Messonnier had scared people unnecessarily," as The Times put it.

Trump also threatened to fire her from the CDC altogether, according to the Journal.

That day, Azar tried to solve some of the damage by giving a follow-up press conference, but Trump was still incensed.

While Trump did not end up firing Dr. Messonnier, The Times reported that the entire episode effectively ended any efforts to persuade Trump to take decisive action to mitigate the virus' spread and led to Azar being sidelined in favor of Vice President Mike Pence.

Trump ended up squandering three crucial weeks before finally announcing nationwide stay-at-home and social distancing measures on March 16.

In the time between Dr. Mesonnier's remarks and mid-March, the number of confirmed cases in the US surged from just 15 to over 4,200.